Regarding Authority - Athens Biennale | Apr. & May 2016 - Athens

03/07/2016, 19:45:57

Regarding Authority - Αthens Biennale 2015-2017 "OMONOIA"

Lo And Behold is taking part in Synapse 2 of the Athens Biennale 2015-17 “ΟΜΟΝΟΙΑ” with the project "Regarding Authority.

The project Regarding Authority investigates power as a concept and as a term. What is power? What are its different forms? What are its limits? How does affect people and society? How does it change? How does it define us?
Lo and Behold proposes an ongoing participatory action investigating the aforementioned issue. The space of Bageion Hotel will host an interactive installation with typewriters, where the public is invited to document their view on the concept of power. Related material that has emerged from members of Lo and Behold is displayed on the walls of the space.

Nice! | Μar. 2016 - Athens

A poetic exploration about the possibility of return, of memory, homeland and loss.

Yannis Grigoriadιs and Yannis Isidorou (Salon De Vortex) as part of their continuing research into the city, shift their attention from the Metropolitan center to the Western suburbs where they curate and present the exhibition “Nice!” in Nikaia, at the cultural center Manos Loizos (former Mechanic cultivation) a historical, industrial building emblematic of the surrounding area which encapsulates one hundred years of history within its walls.

Twenty four guest artists present personal narrative constructs/contraptions aiming to delineate the field of subjective memory. By means of comparative citing of experience in the changing environment, they explore accumulated beliefs, experiences and memories, questioning the function of these in structuring an incoherent identity (individual or collective).

A variety of approaches, found objects, recordings and representations, bodily actions, archives and collections comprise the main form of the exhibition, while wandering, reflection, observation, psychogeography and its variegation within time-space, are the project's main methodological tools and practices.

On the occasion of the exhibition, a collective volume will be published with literary and theoretical texts as well as artwork by the participants around the question of the feasibility or otherwise of the “return”.

Public Domain | Jun. 2014 - Geneva

12/11/2014, 1:10:46

PUBLIC DOMAIN

Lo and Behold presents at Milkshake agency the project Public Domain
26th June – 24th August 2014
The project includes 25 artists / 25 site specifics located in 12 different cities in 10 counties and it is curated by Artemis Potamianou and Giorgos Papadatos.

Public Domain is a map-archive project consisting in documented interventions and actions in the public space.

The participating artists follow a specific working process both in terms of method and end result. They are asked to imagine and to realize an intervention on a public site in the city where they live. Afterwards they are asked to photograph the intervention and submit it in the form of a print. These prints will be exhibited at Milkshake-agency project space together with an index with exact location and time of the actions.

The end result is a linear visual archive of site-specific works which signify the artists’ varying investigations and concerns and also serving as an intervention in the urban environment. An intervention which walks the fine line between legitimacy and illegitimacy, since viewing the art object is not voluntary rather it is imposed upon the viewer. Concurrently, the artist is exposed in a way and on a scale in which not just his/her practice is externalized but individual ideas, feelings and attitudes are also freely expressed, following an internal negotiation where the personal is transformed into the public.

In this manner, a record is kept, a visual diary, but also a process of dialogue is activated which exceeds the boundaries of personal investigation.
This dialectic archive is acutely political in that it documents the pulse and the concerns of different artists who, not only reflect the culturally, politically and economically different societies which they are a part of, but in the end are also representative of contemporary art production of their time.

The first part of Public Domain which included 25 documented international interventions was realised and presented at Supermarket Independent Art-Fair at Kulturhuset of Stockholm in 2012

Julie René de Cotret (Canada)Nestlé takes 1.1 Million Litters of water/day from
Hillsburgh's Aquifer at a rate of $3.71/million litters,
consequently adding 10's of millions of plastic bottle
waste amongst the other vast environmental impacts
of their water bottling practices.

Iris Plaitakis (Greece)Ode to Yellow Polka Dots

Lanfranco Aceti (Italy/Turkey)Little Piggy, Financial Triptych,
from the series National Panties

Elena BajoFrom a ruin to a monument

Reflections on Art and Literature | Feb. 2014 - Berlin

12/11/2014, 1:03:30

Reflections on Art and Literature

Lo and Behold presents the exhibition entitled Reflections on Art and Literature, at rosalux – the Berlin-based art office.
Artemis Potamianou (Athens based) and Thalia Vrachopoulos (New York based) are the curators of the exhibition which will open on Saturday 22nd of February 2014 at 7 pm.
The exhibition will remain open until 22th March 2014.

The relationship between visual art and literature — close, reciprocal and multifaceted in terms of aims and objectives — is characterised by a dynamic interaction which had been going on for centuries and constitutes a popular area of art history, with different approaches depending on the researcher’s starting point.

Yet even without aspiring to follow such an approach, one can hardly fail to observe the common path, the parallel interpretation of historical reality and the interaction among so different fields of artistic creation, to the point where they go beyond being mere stimuli and sources of inspiration for each other as their boundaries are abolished in the oeuvre of certain artists.

The different roles but also the influences exchanged between literature and visual art make this a typical example of the evolution of a productive symbiotic relation. Although varying in their nature and expressive media, their creative process heeds comparable principles and fulfils similar needs, providing new paths and opportunities for discourse over and beyond the individual traits of images and language.

Virginia Woolf, The Death of the Moth,
and other essays, Craftsmanship,
Words Fail Me, 1937

Isabel BaraonaUntitled book, 2002

Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment:
The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales, 1976

Kostas BassanosTrue places never are, 2013

Herman Melville, Moby Dick, 1851

Maria IkonomopoulouText, 2013

Tom van Deel, Ogenblik

Meg HitchcockBuddhist Blessing, 2013

Buddha Blessings

Nikos PapadimitriouFair is foul, and foul is fair; Hover through the fog and filthy air, 2013.

William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 1606,

Rebecca AgnesMercury, 2011

Isaac Asimov, The Dying Night,
Nine tomorrows, 1956

Renee MagnantiWoven Print: Women Weave II, 2013

Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own, 1929

Richard HumannFinnegans Wake, 2012

James Joyce, Finnegan’s Wake, 1939

Robert C. MorganBodhi #19. 2009

Pier Paolo Pasolini, Poems

Tiny DomingosBlack ball on plinth, 2013

Enrique Vila-Matas, Bartleby & Co, 2001

Christina Mitrentse300 pages in a Mushroom, part of #ATML Vol. III, 2013

Monica Ali, Brick Lane, 2003
Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities,1972

State of Mind | Feb. 2013 - Stockholm / May 2013 - Athens

09/11/2013, 12:49:20

State of Mind

15-17 February 2013, Supermarket Art Fair, Stockholm

This year Lo and Behold invites the artist Nikos Papadimitriou to curate a project. The theme of Supermarket 2013 art fair refers to the notion of “Happiness”.

Buddhist monks believe that happiness has nothing to do with materiality but is a state of mind. Aristotle argues that happiness depends upon ourselves and Mahatma Gandhi that happiness is when what you think, what you say and what you do are in harmony. According to Wikipedia: “Happiness is a mental or emotional state of well-being characterized by positive or pleasant emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy”. The question is: How do we perceive happiness today? Who and under which conditions could be considered happy and what could possibly lead us to a state of happiness? Could someone be in a state of joy regardless of the social environment around him? The lack of what could be described as a joyful life and the loss of wealth -in terms of the western capitalistic paradigm- leads some of us to the emotional state of funk or depression.

Bearing the above questions in mind, artists are invited to produce artworks of A2 size (60 x 42 cm) on paper with starting points on the above issues. The technique can be drawing, painting, photography, collage, printmaking, digital print, text or mixed media.

Public Domain | Feb. 2012 - Stockholm

09/11/2013, 12:48:52

Public Domain

Lo and Behold’s participation in Supermarket Art Fair, 17-19 February 2012, is a call for artists to create within the bounds of the urban landscape, and uses as an index, the unique nature of an artist’s approach in an environment which is globalized, featuring similar problems and circumstances.

The participating artists follow a specific working process both in terms of method and end result. They are asked to imagine and to realize an intervention on a public wall in the city where they live. Afterwards they are to photograph the intervention and submit it in the form of a poster. These posters will be exhibited at Lo and Behold’s booth at Supermarket.

The end result is a patchwork of a number of site-specific works which signify the artists’ varying investigations and concerns and at the same time serve as an intervention in the urban environment. An intervention which walks the fine line between legitimacy and illegitimacy, since viewing the art object is not chosen rather it is imposed upon the viewer. Concurrently, the artist is exposed in a way and on a scale in which not just his/her practice is externalized but individual ideas, feelings and attitudes are also freely expressed, following an internal negotiation where the personal is transformed into the public.

{The urban realm, sometimes in a leading role and other times on the sidelines, functioning more as a canvas or as a ‘wall’ on social networking pages, integrates the work into the space and the environment, raising questions which more recently are not just current but crucial.}

In this manner, a record is kept, a visual diary, but also a process of dialogue is activated which exceeds the boundaries of personal investigation.
This dialectic collage is acutely political in that it documents the pulse and the concerns of different artists who, not only reflect the culturally, politically and economically different societies which they are a part of, but in the end are also representative of contemporary art production of their time.

After the Rage | Dec. 2011 - Athens

09/11/2013, 12:44:55

After the Rage8 - 14.12.2011

Lo and Behold presents the video screening program After the Rage, which will take place from 08 to 14 December at Beton7 Center for the Arts.
After the rage is a video screening project taking place over 7 days which will feature the work of artists from Arab countries and the Arab diaspora.
In selecting these artists, the project seeks to draw attention to the geo-cultural conditions that have emerged in the past year, what the media termed the “Arab Spring”, thereby predetermining its eventual course. The end purpose here is not to come up with regional clusterings or to look for national and religious stereotypes, nor is it to locate geo-strategic blueprints and power relations.
It is, rather, to reveal the symbolic dimension of this reordering of societies, which is taking place through the mobilization of a massive part of their nexus, despite the heterogeneous, contradictory and, often, violent means involved.
The search for these experiences, directly or otherwise, in the work of Arab artists, not as a mere chronicle in a linear relationship to events or future possibilities, but as a framework, whose common thread is the “adversity condition”, is especially relevant for contemporary visual art production in Greece, a society dealing with equally peculiar conditions, albeit of different origin.

Fear Φόβος ['fovos] | Mar. 2011 - Athens

09/11/2013, 12:43:39

Fear Φόβος ['fovos]24.2-24.3.2011

Lo and Behold presents the exhibition Fear ['fovos], which will take place from 24 February to 24 March at the independent space Salon de Vortex.

The exhibition explores the increase of individual fears and their currency in the present socio-political circumstances, and it considers the historicity of fear. At the same time, it attempts to introduce a framework of reflexion on personal fears as they are delineated in visual arts.

The practices of response to fear, also, are not always explicit, ranging from opposition, enforcement and occupation to defence, shrinking and withdrawal. In this respect, when personal fears constitute the raw material of artistic creation, they are documented as images of decorum, normality or ambivalence, while in other instances they are articulated as forms of conflict, anxiety and violence.

The exhibition examines aspects of fear as they have been illustrated in the work of ten contemporary artists. The participating artists come from different geographical areas and draw on diverse experiences and interpretations of fear. Vanessa Anastasopoulou depicts introversion and stillness; Sarah Dwyer reveals the fear of entrapment and Vangelis Gokas paints calm suffocation. Alexandre Arrechea renders the mood of continuous surveillance and pursuit; Nikos Arvanitis comments on social discipline, while Sifis Lykakis investigates the deformations and limits of the self. Clement Page explores the language of unconscious fear; Ciprian Muresan shows the fear of leap into the void; Yiannis Papadopoulos speculates on the poeticality and the space of fear and Amie Siegel films the urban spatialisation of isolation.

PIGS Case | Feb. 2011 - Stockholm / Jun. 2011 - Athens

09/11/2013, 12:42:47

PIGS Case

Lo and Behold is participating in Supermarket Art Fair in Stockholm, which will take place in 18 – 20 February 2011.

Supermarket is an international artist-run art fair, which provides a showcase for artist initiatives from all over the world and aims at creating opportunities for new networks in the international art scene.

The project PIGS Case, with which Lo and Behold is participating, is an exhibition of small-scale works, all of which together fit into a suitcase.The works, by artists from the European countries with faltering economies (the so-called PIGS: Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain), convey a sense of the personal item which one takes along on a trip, or even when emigrating overseas. The project references Duchamp’s “Boîte-en-Valise”, a carrying-case containing photographs and miniature replicas of his most important pieces, which he created initially during WWII to preserve his work for posterity in a time of crisis and in the event that he had to flee abroad.

The project PIGS Case was also presented in Athens, 20-24 June 2011, at SKOUZE3.

Alexandros Psychoulis, Alien Species 13

Chris Hawtin, Sleeper I

Fotini Gouseti, Untitled

Giorgos Papadatos, Thinking system with mouse trap

Iris Plaitakis, Untitled

Italo Zuffi, Panorama 2011

Leonidas Giannakopoulos, Untitled

Paul Ekaitz, Untitled (Second Drawing)

Rebecca Agnes, Mars

Sarah Dwyer, The two lags

Seamus Farrell, Conditions of Illusion

Vitor Espalda, I

Yiannis Grigoriadis, A left-handed Suitcase

Yiannis Melanitis, Kryographia Οutcast

Artemis Potamianou, Review: Running

Nikos Papadimitriou, Model for Hunt

Domenico Mangano, Ruby - Gate

Noé Sendas, Crystal Girl No36

Yiannis Theodoropoulos, Untitled

Takis Germenis, Untitled

Martim Ake Smith-Mattsson, Primitive Man

Wolfgang Berkowski, God

Eirene Efstathiou, Works to be Occupied (fragment)

Dimitris Gizinos, Landscape

Space is the Place | Apr. 2010 - Athens

09/11/2013, 12:40:08

LO AND BEHOLD presents the group exhibition Space is the Place curated by Artemis Potamianou and is hosted at the exhibition space about: which belongs to KEMSE. www.aboutt.gr

In the exhibition, Space is the Place, the new alternative exhibition venue provides an opportunity for a dialogue through which to define and explore the notion of space from different visual approaches, both morphologically and conceptually.
Architectural space, space as defined in relation to the body, geo-cultural identity, the ‘uncanny’ and the presentation/ description of a utopian space are the thematic areas to be explored in this exhibition.

Space constitutes a standard point of reference in artistic creation, whether the latter is confined within the boundaries of the canvas, is a three-dimensional sculpture-installation which incorporates and transforms its surroundings or unfolds in the intangible space of a performance which interacts with the viewer.

At the same time, in an age when the ‘a-topian’ culture of globalisation raises questions about identity, character and history, the positioning of artistic creation in space and time may signify a play with memory, a political comment or a query about the waning boundaries between public and private.

Architectural elements, which pervade the language of art with increasing frequency, delineate the creative work using common features which are familiar to the viewer. The constantly changing social conditions and the cultural osmoses that affect the cityscape are standard components in the discourse between space-place and collective memory.

Through an artist’s gaze, the unfamiliar characteristics of familiar situations are magnified in a combination which is at once fascinating and paradoxical – a sensation that Sigmund Freud described as ‘uncanny’.

In the exhibition ‘Space is the Place’, the new alternative exhibition venue provides an opportunity for a dialogue through which to define and explore the notion of space from different visual approaches, both morphologically and conceptually.
Architectural space, space as defined in relation to the body, geo-cultural identity, the ‘uncanny’ and the presentation/description of a utopian space are the thematic areas to be explored in this exhibition.

Ioannis Savvidis’s work “Regilla’s Triangle” pays tribute to politicians’ attempts and aspirations to assume a serious role in Greek art and culture. His 3D model is the result of a processing which condenses the various unfruitful proposals that have been made over the years for the development of the site of the former Rizarios Ecclesiastical School, and demonstrates the gap between what might have been and what is there now.

The ‘uncanny’ plays a crucial role in Marko Blazo’s “Temple 1”, “Temple 2”. In a similar vein to M. C. Escher, Blazo’s buildings could only be designed by exploiting the trompe l’oeil tricks of perspective. Their utopian as well as humorous mood reflects the feelings and quests of the artist who ‘restores’ the image of the ancient buildings in a personal attempt to once again make them attractive and interesting to the viewer.

Humour and sarcasm are also evident in the work “Visionary” by Magnus Thierfelder, which attempts a second reading of the way the concept of space is perceived and excites the viewer’s curiosity. In Thierfelder’s site-specific work a black water pipe occupies the space and follows an unexpected course. A bulge at some point along its length gives the impression that something unknown is trying to invade the building. The labyrinthine characteristics of this piece intensify the play with the viewer, in an artwork whose boundaries are confused with the tangible features of the space.

It is with a characteristic depiction of Lisbon that Rui Toscano takes part in the exhibition. In his work “Lisbon Calling” the shaky line that maps the city, to the accompaniment of a musical piece composed by the artist himself in collaboration with Rui Valerio, turns the viewer into a modern-day flaneur, a witness to the course of today’s globalised urban landscape.

The door as a substitute for a building, with all its associations as an element that protects, distinguishes and separates the interior from the exterior, has the leading role in Italo Zuffi’s “Shaking Doors II”. In this video, doors of various shapes alternate as they are seen to shake against a white background. The schizoid music that accompanies the work, like yet another muscular twitch of the ailing edifice, is an allegory to a declining architecture.

An architecture in decline and Greek reality as seen in the increasingly run-down centre of Athens are the main themes in Yiannis Grigoriadis’s “The Architecture of Poverty”. The artist employs various media (such as photographs, texts, maps, video) to focus, not on the obvious and the expected, but on the details, shedding light on aspects of the cityscape which may go unnoticed yet subtly shape its texture.

Erik Binder explores the economic aspect of an ‘architecture of the universe’. The digital prints in “Freezee seazon P1040973” depict houses made of credit cards in their simplest form, in the most elemental representation of buildings in an artificial, almost fairytale-like setting.

Yiannis Theodoropoulos’s photographic polyptych is a comment on the Greek mentality of the ‘patented’ solution and the urban landscape that results from it. Here, private space encounters the external environment, articulating a reality in which the anarchic solutions seem surrealistic and the odd, unfamiliar edifices seem to be either products of image processing or the scale models of actual buildings.

The project “Protocol of immediate personalisation” by Alexandros Psychoulis is a special case where the building and the exhibition space are used as structural elements of the visual installation. In this site-specific work, which unfolds on a central pillar of the venue, an embroidery made of plastic cord represents a mirrored human figure. This results in a play with the paradoxical, as the structural materials of the ‘sturdy’ building recede before the sharp creative process of producing the art object.

Wolfgang Berkowski attempts a different approach to architectural space. Using the gaze of the viewer and the gazes of the figures in a photograph which is part of the installation, Berkowski comes up with a set of imaginary lines which redefine perspective. He employs the dynamics of the space combined with the way in which viewers perceive the architectural elements in order to project his needs and his quests.

In his work “O.T.”, Christoph Raitmayr also abolishes the conventional rules of perspective. His collage is an image of a surrealist architectural project similar to an airborne island-city. This structure, at once credible and infeasible, leads the viewer to focus on the common traits between the contemporary city and the much-debated concept of the “island”.

Finally, Thanos Klonaris’s processed photographs reflect a different view of the relationship between architecture and the individual. The utopian buildings shown in Klonaris’s work, the combination of real and imaginary elements, make up a set of hybrid landscapes and raise questions concerning man, isolation and the pursuit of personal happiness.

Artemis Potamianou
Curator of the Exhibition

Alexandros Psychoulis, Protocol of Immediate Personalisation

Christoph Raitmayr, O.T.

Eric Binder, Freezee Seazon P1040973

Yiannis Grigoriadis, The Architecture of Poverty

Yiannis Theodoropoulos, Space Oddity

Ioannis Savvidis, Regilla's Triangle

Italo Zuffi, Shaking Doors II

Magnus Thierfelder, Visionary

Marco Blazo, Temple I

Rui Toscano, Lisbon Calling

Thanos Klonaris, Lake of Joy

Wolfgang Berkowski, An image of a group of persons looking at an image of themselves looking at an image of themselves contemplating a round object